Called flash fiction, quick fiction or nano fiction, literature in miniature has been around for decades. Depending on the author or the editor, flash fiction can be 100 words, 250 words, 55 words, or even six words. Hemingway wrote flash fiction. Although she’s well known as a novelist, Margaret Atwood is also a flash fiction writer. I like the discipline of creating a complete story and finishing with precisely 100 words.
Here again is a crime drama in exactly 100 words. Continue Reading →
Attorney Sam McRae has a more than troublesome case. Her missing client is accused of murder and implicated in a bank scandal. Sam’s affair with a married prosecutor—who is likely not going to leave his wife—weighs on her often. And as she tries to locate her missing client, she’s followed by a black Lincoln. “Something about the design suggested a rolling black casket.”
Driving a beat-up Mustang convertible, Sam chases from Maryland to Pennsylvania to track down her client, shadowed by the Mob and worried that someone connected to the case is trying to steal her identity. The engaging, fast-moving story reads
like the PI novel that it is, even though the protagonist is an attorney. Sam has more instinct, determination and guts than most male investigators, and she manages to stay one step ahead of the cops.
Sam meets a nosy neighbor with alcohol and garlic breath, a private eye who is either stalking her or there to save her, a woman with a scarred face and a “three-pack-a-day voice” and an upper-crust strip club owner with something to hide. Add in Mob figures made from equal parts menace and violence plus eccentric federal agents and you have an entertaining—and upsetting—cast of characters.
Finally, the story is decorated with lively language and descriptions: Continue Reading →
What is a mystery novel without a puzzle? Guest writer Daniella Bernett explores some of the elements that make up the puzzle. Bernett’s second mystery in the Emmeline Kirby-Gregory Longdon series, Deadly Legacy, debuts tomorrow, Sept.24, from Black Opal Books.
Why is the question that my mind whispers when I dip into a deliciously intriguing mystery. For me, it’s always been about the puzzle. A desire to find out how and why a crime was conceived and executed. To figure out who the murderer is before the sleuth.
Does it sound cold-blooded and calculating? Perhaps it is. But I rather like to view it as a diverting challenge. I have to be sharp because the author has deliberately set me off on the wrong path. The only way to uncover the right clues that will reveal the truth is to part the gauzy curtain of misdirection. The author is not completely cruel, though. He or she always leaves a strand or two dangling in the wind. It is the reader’s job to grasp it quickly before it drifts away.
Another thing that helps the reader tremendously on this quest for answers is understanding human nature and all its foibles. In my opinion, Agatha Christie was the master at peeling back the layers of the psyche to reveal greed, jealousy and pure, naked evil. Knowledge is power. With knowledge, the reader can navigate the twists and turns of the tale to see justice prevail, as it always must. Continue Reading →
Nostalgia City Mysteries 